GDC contest winner buries game in the desert, invites you to find it

The winner of the Game Design Challenge at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is taking his board game one step further by burying it in the Nevada desert. Jason Rohrer created A Game for Someone as part of a challenge called Humanity’s Last Game with the intent of someone playing it more than 2,000 years in the future.

True to the contest, Rohrer used about 30 pounds of titanium to create the 18x18-inch game board as well as the game pieces. But perhaps even more interesting than the game itself is the level of secrecy surrounding it.

The game was tested in video game format but even the creator has yet to play it. Furthermore, he didn’t elaborate at all on how it’s even played. What he did was print up a set of instructions on acid-free paper, sealed them in a Pyrex tube and inserted that into a titanium contraption for safe keeping.

Rohrer then buried the game at a secret location in the Nevada desert, although he kept a record of the GPS coordinates. From there, he printed out a list of 1 million GPS locations in the desert and handed them to fellow GDC conference attendees. The way he sees it, if one location is visited each day using a metal detector, the game will be found within the next million days – or roughly 2,700 years.